Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Blankie

I have some good stories about New Jersey that I want to share, but who has the time?

Story #1: I finished the baby blanket. I didn't finish by completing the pattern. I finished by running out of yarn. I could tell I was going to run out of yarn and I had to estimate how many more rows of pattern I could do and leave enough for the border. I underestimated and only wound up with two rows of border at the end instead of six. Yeesh. In fact, I ran out of yarn about ten stitches from completion. I had a long leftover piece--always save scraps!--and somehow managed to join it to the yarn I was working with and finish the darn thing. Ridiculous!

Here's a summary of how much work this darn thing was: 125 stitches per row. 36x6 rows of pattern. 6x2 rows of border. Approximately ten minutes of knitting time per row. If you're counting, that's about 38 hours of work. I managed to knit about 195 rows ((36x5)+7 rows of pattern and 8 rows of border), for a mere 32.5 hours of work. Of course, that doesn't include time for corrections--the unknitting I had to do when I noticed mistakes.

The good news is that everyone loved the blanket. My sister-in-law, the grandmother of the baby who is to receive the blanket, thought it was wonderful and wanted to keep it for herself. One of my nieces expressed the same sentiment and said she wanted to learn to knit.

I also promised to makes scarves for all six of my nieces. Don't worry, scarves are easier. And there is no time limit. One of them said, "It's a long while to winter--you'll have plenty of time." Indeed.